美联社新闻一分钟 2006-07-20(在线收听

1. A cruise ship carrying more than 1,000 Americans left Beirut this morning enroute to Cyprus. It's the first mass U.S. evacuation from Lebanon since Israeli airstrikes began last week. Roughly 8,000 Americans in the region want to be evacuated.

2. Florida officials say a child is among at least 20 people seriously injured when the Crown Princess cruise ship suddenly tilted sharply to one side shortly after setting sail from Port Canaveral, Florida late yesterday afternoon. The ship apparently has steering problems.

3. More than 270 people are still missing in the wake of a killer tsunami that hit Indonesia on Monday. The death toll now stands at 531. The giant wave, which was triggered by a magnitude 7.7 undersea earthquake, smashed into a 110-mile stretch of Java's coastline.

4. Skies are cloudy along the North Carolina coast, but wind and rain from Tropical Storm Beryl is still several miles offshore and the system is heading north. The National Hurricane Center says Beryl is likely to parallel the East Coast instead of heading onshore and is not likely to go into a hurricane.

WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. enroute: adv
Enroute to a place means on the way to that place.

2. set sail: phr
When a ship sets sail, it leaves a port.

3. trigger: vb
If something triggers an event or situation, it causes it to begin to happen or exist.

4. in the wake of: phr
If one thing follows in the wake of another, it happens after the other thing is over, often as a result of it.

5. parallel: vb
If one thing parallels another, they are the same distance apart along their whole length.

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